Saddle Stitch - Up The Irons

We all know that in order to achieve a level of satisfaction with something, you need to practice. To practice, you need patience. 

Patience and practice have always been difficult skills for me. I’ve always been under the impression that if I can’t achieve perfection the first time around, I must just be awful at it so what’s the point. For some reason, this mindset doesn’t apply to leatherworking, and I am truly grateful, as now I am learning patience for other things in life.

Here’s a short story of persistence and my yearly attempts at handsewing with my Vergez-Blanchard pricking irons.

 I bought these pricking irons a few years ago as I wanted to have “the best...to be the best”.

That’s all well and good, but my stitch work was just not there yet.

Year one:

So I continued stitching with forgiving diamond irons. They do the job well (and still do). So another year passes and I try the VB irons again. 

Year two:

 Not as bad. But still, not what I want to put out into the world.

This year, something clicked. Year three:

I now have the front and back, beautiful stitching. Brilliant. Now, while I may not have been using these irons for the past three years, I had been practicing my stitching. That is what made the difference. Not the fancy, expensive tools, but the time...and all that stupid practice and patience. 🧘🏻‍♀️

Now, maybe a video on stitching is in order...as There are so many out there that aren’t as helpful as they could be...